Alan Zibel

1/ @motherjones.com reported extensively on this group, Freedom 250—and the larger effort to whitewash our history and get corporations to fund that destruction—in our cover story that went up last week: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

by @dfriedman.bsky.social and @noturtlesoup17.bsky.social

For $1 Million, Donors to U.S.A. Birthday Group Offered Access to Trump A new organization blessed by the president is raising money for events and projects that will put a Trumpian spin on the nation’s semiquincentennial.

President Trump’s allies are offering access to him and other perks to donors who give at least $1 million to a new group supporting flashy initiatives he is planning around the U.S.’s 250th birthday, according to documents and interviews.

my latest..

13 companies seeking to mine our public lands spent $8.4 MILLION on lobbying over the past two years.

These companies are threatening our national parks in order to increase their own private profits.

And the Trump admin isn't just allowing it - they're encouraging it.

The Trump family was personally enriched by a foreign government.

According to our co-president Rob Weissman, "This may be the biggest Trump scandal yet."

An image depicts about a dozen red hands on the left and and a dozen blue hands on the right. The red hands are all lined up in perfect rows, all oriented toward the blue hands, and all are pointing at the blue hands in identical positions. The blue hands are each oriented in a different direction, each is in a different position. Some are pointing at other blue hands, some are closed fists, and a couple are giving a thumbs down.

Wish I could like this @newyorker.com graphic a million times. media.newyorker.com/photos/69725...

This is the difference between running a bespoke opinion site that caters to a narrow audience, and a large, public-company news org with a PR department that has much bigger things to worry about than which dubious guy is contributing think pieces

Trump must be learning a lot from his new crypto buddies because this looks like an email your grandma gets telling her she needs to go to the gas station bitcoin ATM and send the IRS $1,000

I need a job and I would not take a job working for Bari Weiss. If you are a commentator who cannot see what the play is there, I'm not sure you should be offering commentary.

what’s up with New Mexico?

Outrage over ICE has spilled into typically apolitical online spaces Fury over Alex Pretti’s killing has flooded the internet’s most apolitical venues, reflecting a growing outrage over the Trump administration’s crackdown.

New: Just how furious are Americans about ICE? Sewing influencers, bourbon vloggers and the mod of r/catbongos are all taking a political stand. "I refuse to wake up in five or 10 years and look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘You had a platform and did nothing,'" a golf YouTuber told me

Who Watches the Watchdogs? How Watchdogmatists Launder the Climate Emergency

Natural gas prices are spiking. US consumers will pay huge bills because we're too reliant on gas and export too much gas but Alex Trembath would like to talk philosophy & argue about a month-old social media fight.

What is up with these guys?

www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/who-watche...

Justin Ling: In Davos, Trump and Carney gave us two radically different ways to see the world Making Trump pay for his rhetoric is the only way forward.

Carney quoted Greek historian Thucydides, cited Czech democratic hero Václav Havel and outlined how the old systems of the liberal order were over.

Trump said NATO “called me daddy.”
www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Trump’s Own Advisers Suddenly Unnerved as ICE Raids Take Horrific Turn So the president doesn’t like the “optics” of what ICE is doing. But there’s no such thing as sanitized, popular mass deportations—and this is by design.

Trump is privately worried about the "optics" of ICE raids and his advisers are looking for ways to soften them, Axios reports. I'm calling bullshit: The terror and violence cannot be hived off from the broader policy agenda. They are 100% intrinsic to it.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/2053...

We’re in a new era apnews.com/article/chin...

CBS News report on ICE officer’s injuries drew ‘huge internal concern’ Anonymously sourced report that Jonathan Ross ‘suffered internal bleeding’ after killing Renee Good faced skepticism inside CBS newsroom

"The network’s top editor, Bari Weiss, expressed a high level of interest in the story on an editorial call Wednesday morning, according to staffers who listened." www.theguardian.com/media/2026/j...

Last week, we announced a plan to make child care universal. Today, applications are open for pre-K & 3-K. If your child is turning 3 or 4, apply now for the fall at: myschools.nyc

E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution

The fact that air pollution protections save lives (and thus dollars) has long been an inconvenient fact for those who want polluting industries unfettered.

This move is indefensible and dangerous.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...

Again, and it blows my mind that this barely gets any coverage: data centres have played a key role in re-coupling US emissions to economic growth, and accelerating the coal-boosting impacts of the LNG export boom and Trump's coal mandates

This is........pretty wild

A collection of "insiders" say they don't think data centres are (the present tense is important) slowing down decarbonisation (mostly the "innovators")

This comes out 1 day after a @rhg.com US emissions update that *explicitly* names DCs as a core cause of rising GHGs

FDA deletes warning on bogus autism therapies touted by RFK Jr.‘s allies The agency used to warn of chelation, used by RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine ally David Geier.

There’s a big story everyone is missing—but this article hits on it.

We aren’t just seeing public health dismantled bc we’ve been taken over by conspiracy theorists and lunatics.

What we’re really seeing is the giant, predatory, underegulated wellness industry come to Washington.

DC ads are about everyday concerns like de minimum tax exemptions for bitcoin transactions

Six-byline alert: 🚨

“.. laws of armed conflict forbid combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them. That is a war crime called ‘perfidy.’”

@nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/u...

Harvard's finest!

huh.

Trump's abduction of Maduro wasn't about freedom for Venezuelans.

It was to grab Venezuela’s oil.

Now Trump aims for American taxpayers to foot the bill to rebuild the Venezuelan oil & gas industry – all to guarantee the profits of Big Oil.

No way.

Billionaire hedge funder Paul Singer, whose firm acquired oil giant Citgo at a bargain price, has much to gain from Nicolás Maduro’s ouster.

On Fox News Saturday, Trump made clear that one of the motivations for Saturday’s attack was to increase the production and export of Venezuelan oil.

Congress Must Stop Trump’s Venezuelan Oil Takeover - Public Citizen

A new report from @publiccitizen.bsky.social warns that Big Oil may demand US taxpayers fund guarantees for their investments in Venezuela.

Congress must fund healthcare, housing + climate action, not Big Oil's profit-making schemes. www.citizen.org/article/cong...

This is not only classic strongman shit, but *idiotic* strongman shit. Destroying the reputation of the world’s most important central bank by politically hijacking it is a recipe for financial and economic disaster